Singing the Psalms Part 1: The Psalms are about Jesus and for Jesus

By Ben Petersen, 09 Feb 2022

Since September 2021 we’ve been singing through the Psalms in our Sunday services at Church by the Bay. Before then we had been reading them aloud. I think most people have loved it, even though it’s foreign to many. When Paul calls the church in Colossae to let Christ’s word dwell among them richly ‘as sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God’ (Colossians 3:16) he means singing the Psalms of the Old Testament.

We’ve loved it, but there is a difficulty we have to acknowledge. I am not the ‘I’ in the Psalms; and neither are you.

I am not the ‘I’ in the Psalms

We feel this difficulty most in the fact that in almost every Psalm there’s something we can’t say for ourselves. Let’s take the most famous Psalm as an example, Psalm 23.[1] We can feel pretty comfortable saying lots of it. ‘The Lord is my shepherd! I shall not want’ - I know that he will provide what I need. He is the reason I need not fear when death comes near. But: ‘you anoint my head with oil’!? First, I don’t know what that means; and second, even when I find out that it’s part of a victory celebration for the king, I have two problems.

• I haven’t won a big victory.
• I’m not a king in the first place.

Even the best-known Psalm doesn’t quite fit our lips as we assume it might. I can’t take all those words and make them my own before God! We end up taking the bits that make sense to us, or warm our hearts, and only praying those bits - whether that’s little bits of individual Psalms, or a selection of five to ten favourites. We end up picking and choosing the bits we find useful. But that leaves about a hundred and forty Psalms unsung, unprayed. And most seriously, it leaves us as the judge of what’s helpful in God’s word and what’s not!

So, what’s the answer? How can these precious songs God’s given his people leave my lips in good conscience? How can they help us as a church as we sing them week to week?

The Psalms are about Jesus

To sing them rightly, we must see that the Psalms are about Jesus. This might sound like we’re trying to find Jesus everywhere, even where he isn’t. But in fact, the Psalms themselves think they’re about Jesus, not to mention the rest of the Bible. There are a few reasons we know this.

The first is the way the Psalms start. Psalms 1 and 2 are a kind of introduction to the rest of the Psalter (the book of Psalms). They let us know what’s going to be a big deal for the rest of the collection. They start by singing about 2 people. First is a man who is blessed with life by keeping God’s law. Second is a king who will rule all nations. All the way through these songs lead God’s people to hope in this man and this king. But the thing is, when the Psalms were collected in the order we know, after the exile in Babylon,[2] God’s people knew they had failed to keep God’s law (that’s what caused the exile!) and David’s royal line had been utterly smashed. There was no human reason to put their hope in a law-keeper or God’s king when the Psalms were arranged as they are. They always pointed forward to the Lord Jesus, the second Adam who kept the law and earned life for his people; and the king in David’s line who now reigns from heavenly Mount Zion.

Second, the New Testament says they’re about Jesus. When Jesus explained on the road to Emmaus that the Old Testament is about him, he explicitly included the Psalms! He says, ‘This is what I told you … Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms’ (Luke 24:44).

This is the first thing we need to see about the Psalms: they’re about Jesus.

The Psalms are for Jesus

The Psalms point us to Jesus, both by speaking about what he would do in the future, and by being Jesus’ own words about himself and for himself. The apostle Peter says:

‘Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and the circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow’ (1 Peter 1:10-11).

Notice two things: first, the prophets ‘spoke of the grace to come.’ i.e., the Lord Jesus and his work. Now, the same Peter, at Pentecost, called King David a prophet. So, as David was writing the Psalms, he was speaking about this grace that was to come. And second, the Holy Spirit who inspired David to write the Psalms was the Spirit of Christ. The words breathed out through David were Christ’s words. Before they were David’s words about Jesus, the Psalms were Jesus’ words for Jesus! Jesus spoke words from heaven, through David, for himself to sing as the perfect man and global king.[3]

Now if they’re about Jesus then only he can pray them properly. ‘A psalm we cannot utter as a prayer, that makes us falter and horrifies us, is a hint to us that Someone else is praying, not we.’[4] Now we see why we have difficulty taking the Psalms directly to our lips: they’re not our words! They’re words written for the Lord Jesus to praise his Father with, to protest his innocence with, to call for judgment on his enemies with, to celebrate victory with. When we read the Psalms, we get to hear and know the thoughts of the perfect man. The man who delights in the law of the LORD. He loves God his Father with the truest love possible, and we get a glimpse of this love in the Psalms. He loves his neighbour with mercy and perfect justice. As our king he loves his people enough to suffer for us. And as our king we hear his victory song. As our priest we hear his praise to God.

Singing the Psalms in Christ

Because we’ve seen how they are for Jesus, we can see how they are for us, his people. As the perfect, blessed man of Psalm 1, Jesus is the image of God. He’s exactly what Adam should have been. And we’re being renewed in our creator’s image – into the image of Christ (Colossians 3:10). By faith we’re joined to him. By his Spirit we’re growing to be more like him in character. So, when we pray or sing the Psalms – either as individual Christians, or as the gathered church – we begin praying as he prayed. 

The church, Christ’s body, joins in with the words of its head. As one new humanity we pray the same prayers and sing the same songs, responding to life in God’s world in a Christlike way. And in a glorious mystery, head and body sing one song! Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, ‘Now that Christ is with the Father, the new humanity of Christ, the Body of Christ continues to pray his prayer to the end of time.’[5] As we follow Jesus, we get treated like him. As we suffer with him; we lament with him; as we celebrate his work, we get to sing with him. It might not be everyone’s experience at once, but we share in each other’s sufferings and hurt as we share in Christ’s sufferings; and he is with us in our sufferings.

Some things to watch out for

To close, here are a few things to look out for as you get started.

• King: It’s the obvious one, but It’s worth noting. Many Psalms are either written by King David, or about King David. If they’re by David, then they give us a glimpse into what God’s king should be praying for. They show us what Jesus, our king, is praying for, i.e., what he wants to happen in us, and what he wants us to join him in praying. 

• Confession: Surely Jesus can’t confess his sins? No. But he’s our head, and we are very sinful! He is so joined to us, and we are so joined to him, that he leads us to the Father in confessing our sins. He leads us as the one who has paid for our sins.
• Innocent Suffering: Jesus prays these Psalms as the innocent sufferer. We pray them as those who suffer for following him. His responses to suffering begin to shape ours, so we become more like him. But also, his innocence is counted to us! So these words actually do become ours in Christ.
• Praise: Psalms are often songs of praise to God. We know from the book of Hebrews that Jesus is in heaven as the great high priest who leads the worship in heaven. In these Psalms we hear his voice calling us from heaven to praise our God with him.

[1] This example is from Christopher Ash, Teaching Psalms Volume 1 (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2017).

[2] We know this because of Psalms like 106 and 107. 106 ends by calling on the LORD to gather his people from the nations (v47) and by v3 of 107 the singers are those that the LORD has “gathered from the lands.” Likewise, Psalm 137 has God’s people by the rivers of Babylon.

[3]So, Craig Carter has it right when he says, ‘The Psalms do not merely speak of Christ; rather, in the Psalms Christ actually speaks.’ Craig A. Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 204.

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (London: SCM, 2015), 31.

[5] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 32.